COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON FIRST SKIPS THE BULLY SALES BLOCK “Instead of ‘hoping’ to get residential/retail development on the site, why not REQUIRE such development on the site via deed restrictions or other contractual agreements with the buyer? This is how HISD screwed themselves on the sale of their old administration building. They sold to the highest bidder and ‘hoped’ they would build something like the fancy mixed use rendering they were passing around. Instead we got a Costco and an LA Fitness. When you consider that HISD pockets more than 50 percent of every tax dollar paid by the property, they might have made more money in the long run by GIVING AWAY their land to someone who would have developed it more intensely.” [Bernard, commenting on Headlines: Downtown Block for Sale; Accessing Remote Hermann Park]
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Tag: Land for Sale
- W Bellfort Ave Daily Ashford area [LoopNet]
ALONG THE SHORES OF BUFFALO BAYOU 
Catie Dixon comes up with a few gems in her interview with the team marketing the 136-acre campus HQ at 4100 Clinton Dr. in the southern portion of the Fifth Ward just east of Downtown that Halliburton spinoff KBR has just put up for sale. HFF has given a name to what may be the “largest infill site” near a major U.S. Central Bus District: “Cityscape on Buffalo Bayou.” And members of the sales team believe it’s ripe for a mixed-use development, now that KBR’s industrial buildings have been demolished. Five office buildings dating from the early seventies (totaling 720,000 sq. ft.) and a 36,000-sq.-ft. employee center are still there. The property’s outstanding “water feature” is a mile of frontage on Houston’s scenic Ship Channel. [Bisnow] Image: HFF
It’s not just the Hunington Properties sign posted in front of Vargo’s announcing a new mixed-use development on the 8.71-acre property, or the more plaintive and direct Land for Sale notice put up more recently. (Asking price: $9 million.) Now there’s another, more compelling harbinger of doom for the 47-year-old lakeside restaurant and event venue at Fondren and Woodway festooned with azaleas and peacocks: A trustee appointed to manage the restaurant’s bankruptcy (which was filed last October but converted to Chapter 7 last month) has ordered Vargo’s shut down for failure to pay rent.
The three buildings listed as 6204 Main St. lie not on the tree-lined block near Rice University, but rather its mixed-use counterpart on North Main. Asking $260,000, the property includes a vacant warehouse flanked by two homes, squeezed onto a quarter-acre in the Rodgers Park area, just south of Sunset Heights and 2 blocks from Metro’s Heights Transit Center.
The warehouse anchors the southeast corner of N. Main and E. 23rd. It’s in “poor condition,” according to the listing. The adjacent houses, meanwhile, are generating rental income. They date back to the late 1920s. The dimensions of every room are described as 10 ft. x 10 ft.
The real-estate fund that’s owned the half-vacant strip center at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Montrose for the last 4 years has put the entire 2.86-acre block up for sale. On the site now: Half Price Books, Spec’s Liquors, Papa John’s Pizza, and the 3-6-9 China Bistro in a stuccoed-over 41,838-sq.-ft. building once known as the Tower Community Center (to match the Tower Theater, now home to El Real Tex-Mex, across the street). Also included: the standalone Jack-in-the-Box on the corner of Montrose and Lovett. No list price, but broker HFF is indicating “price guidance” of $10 million or higher.
The Art Deco building still lurking beneath was designed by architect Joseph Finger in 1937, 2 years before he completed work for Houston’s city hall. Here’s how the shopping center looked then-ish, with a Walgreens on the corner of Yoakum St.:
A few amendments appear to have been made to that giant “Property Not for Sale” sign on JFK Blvd. near Greens Rd. just south of IAH featured on Swamplot last month, notes reader Brett Jensen. Plastered over that simpler earlier sign (shown at right) are now indications of the property’s size, a revised phone number, a real-estate company name and contact, and what appears to be a complete reversal of the previous marketing strategy. An indication that that “don’t even ask” strategy was a flop? Or that it worked too well, and now a new owner of sign and land is simply trying a more practiced strategy to flip it?
- Previously on Swamplot: Not Even Trying
Photos: Brett Jensen (for sale) and Katie Pearson (not for sale)
“I’ve often thought about calling the owner of the lot and asking how much the property is selling for,” writes Swamplot reader Katie Pearson of this not-for-sale sign on JFK Blvd. near Greens Rd., just south of IAH. “The five foot tall digits of the phone number are just so irresistible!”
Photo: Katie Pearson
WHAT’S BEHIND THOSE BOARDED-UP WINDOWS? 
Sawbuck Realty doesn’t appear to have a separate “historic home, likely teardown” template for the home-listing videos the company’s website automatically generates. Which might explain some of the strangeness of this curious autoplay “tour” of the property at 1915 Shearn St. in the First Ward. From the script: “. . . with great space and fresh air for your peace of mind. Which make this home an ideal purchase for buyers who value privacy and comfort.” [Sawbuck Realty, via Swamplot inbox] Photo: HAR
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ADMIRAL MOTEL HIS CASTLE “I would kill for a moat like that. Even if it couldn’t keep the riff raff out, I could mock all those that are subject to water restrictions.” [Hawthorne Mike, commenting on Houston Property Listing Photo of the Day: Flooded with Offers]
- Admiral Motel, 4703 N. Main St. [HAR]
- 22035 Buescher Rd. [HAR]
Only a few days after it sold, the 1961 Tanglewood home and bomb shelter on Brown Saddle St. featured on Swamplot back in January has been put back on the market. Only this time, the listing doesn’t mention the shelter or the abandoned pipeline slicing through a portion of the property — or really anything about the building itself. No more interior pics, either. The low-slung modern structure is now tagged as “not liveable” and won’t be shown — though the agent does fess up to having a key. The asking price? Only $550K more than what the property sold for earlier in the week, when the home and its interior were touted as sales features. At 38,263 sq. ft. (that’s actually been marked down a few thousand sq. ft. from the earlier sale), the lot is advertised as the biggest in Tanglewood.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DEMOLISHINGS AND CLOSINGS 
HISD plans to begin demolishing the old Bastian Elementary School on Calhoun Rd. just south of the South Loop within the next few weeks, in an effort to make the 6-acre property more appealing to possible buyers. The South Park campus has been vacant since 2007, when a new Bastian Elementary was built a mile south on Bellfort. At one point, Lynn Walsh reports, “the property was listed for sale for $825,000, according to an online multiple listings service search, or slightly more than a third of the county’s appraised value for it.” Meanwhile, the HISD board voted this evening to close Grimes, Rhoads, McDade, and Stevenson elementary schools. Some students from Stevenson Elementary will begin classes next year at Love Elementary in the Heights, which had previously been threatened with closure. [Texas Watchdog] Photo of Bastian Elementary: Dikombi Gite
- 1506 Wichman St. [HAR]
- Previously on Swamplot: Olivewood Cemetery’s Grave Situation: Not Washed Down to the Bayou Yet
